A Dog Was Crying Tonight in Wicklow Also

in memory of Donatus Nwoga Humanity fails in its attempt to make earthly death a temporary state. Heaney expresses his sense of loss at the death of Nigerian scholar and critic Donatus Nwoga (who was a fellow student at Queen’s University, Belfast, in the 1950s) by reworking an Igbo fable from the Nigerian folk lore of Nwoga’s roots. Experience of death led to an appeal to the highest authority, to be carried by an animal: When human beings found out about death / They sent the dog to Chukwu with a message. They urged Chukwu to make death temporary and reversible (They wanted to be let back to the house of life). They were unhappy with the idea that […]